Acadia rewards with vistas

My wife, Lisa, took the sandwiches from the backpack and we began to eat in our solitude. Startled, she jumped up, pointing to a very large bird circling the hillside. At first, I thought it was a red-tailed hawk, but its wingspan was too long and its head was white. As it flew directly overhead, it dawned on me that I was watching a bald eagle.

Getting up close and personal with nature is the primary reason we visit national parks. Yet, so many of us venture to Acadia, Shenandoah, Yellowstone, and Yosemite in summer that the only intimacy we find is on a road crowded with other humans. The country's most scenic spots relax after their July and August inundations, seeming to return to their original wild state. This is especially true of Acadia, where thickets of maples on Mount Desert Island turn crimson to add to the already spectacular show of dark blue ocean and evergreen forest. A bonus is that black flies and mosquitoes are a distant memory.

''The weather also tends to be quite nice in September and October," said Cynthia Ocel, a park ranger at Acadia. Ocel said much of the deciduous forest burned down in a fire in 1947, but several pockets of maples remain. She steered us to North and South Bubble, just off the Park Loop, and the Amphitheater Loop, a carriage path trail close to the town of Northeast Harbor.

Leaving our car in the Bubble Rock parking lot, we started the half-mile ascent of North Bubble. A rocky staircase led through a leaf-strewn path of red maples. We reached the flat boulder atop the summit, hoping to catch a view of Jordan Pond to the south. One of the finest aspects of hiking in Acadia is that the ascents are manageable, in this case only 872 feet, yet reward with wonderful scenes of mountains, lakes, and sea.

Unfortunately, we found ourselves socked in by fog.